Hello all, we would like to share a new blog segment that reviews equipment we use in the field for prospecting. We hope these reviews may help those of you who are new to desert prospecting and are not quite sure what kind of equipment you may need, what is functional, reliable, durable, etc. Hopefully some of you may even find this impartial information helpful in making your next purchasing decision for that essential piece of prospecting gear! It's no fun spending a bunch of money on equipment then realizing the gear you just bought isn't what you thought it was all cracked up to be. We use and have used a multitude of equipment over the years and would like to share our opinions with you. We are not dealers or representatives of any of these products, just consumers like you trying to see what works best and what is worth the expense in gold recovery. We are constantly looking for new gear or methods that will help optimize our time spent in the field and maximize our gold recovery! Feel free to leave any of your helpful suggestions or ideas as well...we're always wanting to learn more about prospecting and mining.
What we do know is that desert prospecting is a harsh and extreme environment that can take it's toll on your equipment very quickly. From excessive heat to cold, clouds of fine dust, vibration, and normal abuse sustained from hours of daily use; desert prospecting will push your equipment to the max. We urge you to take care of your equipment and service it routinely, otherwise equipment failure can spoil your prospecting trip in a blink of an eye and we speak from experience!
Our first piece of gear to review is the new Gold Cube which is sold at an advertised price of $479.95 for the four stack deluxe model at www.goldcube.net. When it comes to price, I will not say if we feel it's good or bad...but we are firm believers that you get what you pay for! We were able to see this piece of equipment in action at the recent Gold Show in Las Vegas, NV 2012 as well as use one that a friend of ours had recently purchased.
For this particular equipment test, we set up the Gold Cube four stack, deluxe model in our friend's garage and decided that we would only utilize the three stack modular system to run our materials and see how this unit would fair. Our goal was to test speed, recovery, and clean-out time. We also wanted to see if the Gold Cube could help us streamline our operations by removing or eliminating any steps of our own gold recovery process. Our recovery process is fairly simple: locate an area you wish to work, set up the Keene 151 drywasher, shop vacs, hand tools, electrical cords, and generator; then get to work. Once we have enough material dry-washed, we will then either sample it by panning or running some of it through our Gold Magic gold spiral wheel. If we get color, then we continue to work. If not, then it's time to drink a beer and look somewhere else. Pretty simple right?
At first glance, what we liked about the Gold Cube was it's size and compact look. It's size and weight are portable enough to meet our demands and it will definitely fit in our pick-up truck. Plus, it appears to be very sturdy; manufactured from a very durable, hard polymer type material that could probably withstand my temper-tantrums and the bumpy ride in the bed of the pick-up truck! The Cube's advertised dimensions are: 16"x16"x22" and it weighs in at about 33lbs; not too bad. Since we prospect in remote areas, we require gear that is somewhat lightweight and portable, so thus far we're pretty excited! We also appreciated that this unit does not require a significant amount of water to operate effectively, approximately 10-12 gallons of water was plenty for the small recirculating tub we were using. That's a realistic amount of water to truck in with you when desert prospecting in our opinion. So overall, a very good first impression!
As for set-up, well our friend had already set the unit up on it's included stand and had already connected the included hoses and 12Volt 1100 GPH pump (battery not included). He did indicate it took him "a little while to get it tweaked" but said it set up fairly easy and figures it will become quicker and easier to set up with more practice. Apparently it is also imperative that you get the Cube level in order for it to function optimally in recovering gold...so make sure you remember to bring a level with you when you go out in the field! Also, make sure you bring some kind of safety/catch pan to contain your tailings that accumulate underneath the Cube. We were told that is possible for smaller, flat flakes to get washed out of the Cube and end up in your recirculating tub. Moving on, the one thing we did notice and did not like was the size of the battery terminal clamps! They were too small and flimsy in our opinion. Perhaps they would be ok for the smaller terminals on a motorcycle battery but not for a large, deep cycle marine battery. So for set-up purposes, we will take our friend's word (who is also an experienced prospector) and say the process isn't too bad! Another plus for the Cube but a minus for the clamps!
Alright, the Gold Cube is now set up and ready for us to start running material. We brought approximately 15 gallons of material total to process, situated in different buckets and containers. Most of the material was from the classified gravel right out of our Keene 151 drywasher which classifies the material down to about half of an inch. Some material we brought had already been processed through our spiral gold wheel, so we were anxious to see how much gold we had been losing! Time to run the material right? No...wait, not yet! We're spoiled! We usually just process our classified material right into our gold wheel straight from the 151 drywasher but not now; we have to classify this material down to an eight mesh...eewww! Big turn off now for the Cube and add another step into our recovery process...classifying material! Plus, we do recover nuggets that would get discarded when classifying down to an eight mesh, so now we would have to either scan the larger, discarded material with a metal detector (this would be futile due to the amount of hot rocks and heavy mineralization) or just run all of it through the spiral gold wheel. Not very optimal or efficient for our process! So another big minus for the Gold Cube for our needs. Well, we spend about thirty minutes or so classifying the material down to an eight mesh by hand. Now, we're excited and finally ready to go! We connect the cables to the battery and away it goes...water flowing so smoothly and quickly through the Gold Cube, very nice! We start feeding the machine gallons of previously processed material one scoop at a time and we're very impressed with how quickly the Gold Cube gobbles down the material, a very big plus! We ran about 5 gallons in about 10-15 minutes, not bad at all but now it's time for the clean-out.
Well, we remove the trays one at a time and spray them down with the hose. I must say that you do get wet from the over-spray and if you're not careful, you could possibly lose some of your material too. With practice though, I did get a little less sloppy and quicker. However, I know if I was in the field and it was cold outside, I would not appreciate getting wet from the clean-out process and I know my fingers would not be happy. Summertime heat though and getting wet...that would be a bonus! Anyway, each clean-out took about 15-20 minutes total of all three trays which isn't great but isn't too bad either. Plus, we did have quite a bit of black sand and other small gravels accumulated after each wash out, so unfortunately you still have to perform a final pan or final clean-up. We highly recommend utilizing a piece of finishing equipment such as the Blue Bowl or something of that caliber which can retain the fine flour gold this machine captures. In checking the concentrates ran through the Cube from the previously processed material, no gold was found, thus giving us a sense of confidence that we have not been losing any gold from our spiral wheel. The virgin gold bearing material we processed through the Cube did reveal good results, a decent amount of color ranging from flour to flakes. Very nice, the Gold Cube is doing it's thing...recovering gold! Finally, we ran some material that we had already classified down to 100 mesh and wow, we were impressed! The Gold Cube definitely captures that fine, flour gold. We were amazed how this machine can trap gold that small! Another big plus for the Cube!
All in all, after spending an afternoon and part of the evening working with the Gold Cube, we decided it was not the right fit for us. This machine did not refine or improve our own recovery process, so why bother getting one? We already have enough equipment to lug around! As for the Gold Cube itself, we feel this machine would be more than adequate for desert prospecting and it definitely does what it's advertised to do....Get the gold! Thanks for reading and hope this helps....Happy Diggin'
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